Spire

Started: 2017-09-16 21:04:40

Submitted: 2017-09-17 13:47:27

Visibility: World-readable

18th August 2017: In which the intrepid narrator spends one last day in Copenhagen and climbs an amazing church spire

On our last full day in Copenhagen -- and our last full day in
Scandinavia before returning home -- we saw a few remaining sites in the
city.

Julian walks at Amager Strandpark

Our first stop was Amager Strandpark, a public beach across the street
from our Airbnb. The beach itself was on a barrier island on the far
side of a lagoon. (The lagoon was being set up as the swim portion of an
Ironman triathlon.) The beach was clearly designed to handle large
crowds of people, with wide paths, sturdy refreshment stands, and large
open spaces.

Calvin plays in the sand at Amager Strandpark

The sky was overcast as we walked onto the beach, and I could see only a
few people on the beach, giving it the general feeling of a ghost town.
(The wind farm on the horizon in the photo below is across the straight
in Sweden. I believe it's the same wind farm I
photographed while
landing in Copenhagen.)

Swimming pier and Øresund Straight at Amager Strandpark

From the beach we could look across the lagoon to see our apartment
building (the tallest building in the photo below) lined up with other
apartment buildings along the water, clustering around the metro line
connecting the city center to the airport.

Apartment buildings in Amager

We left the beach and caught the metro to Christianshavn, then walked to
the Church of Our Saviour. This church's main distinguishing feature was
a spire with an exposed spiral staircase that looked like it belonged in
Discworld. I was not entirely enthusiastic about the idea of a
death-defying climb of the exposed spiral staircase, given that I get
anxious with heights above twenty meters or so (even if I'm inside a
probably-perfectly-safe window pane), but figured I'd give it a shot
because Kiesa wanted to climb the spire.

Tower of the Church of Our Saviour

We paid admission to the tower and began to climb. The first part of the
climb was inside the brick tower. The stairs grew progressively more
rickety as we climbed, with deep groves worn into the wooden stairs from
people climbing the tower before me.

Descending the stairs inside the tower of the Church of Our Saviour

The climb took us past the clock mechanism and bell tower, culminating
in a steep and narrow set of stairs that ended in a narrow door leading
to a narrow ledge with only a waist-high railing separating me from the
edge of the tower.

Spiral stairs climbing the spire of Church of Our Saviour

I very carefully did not look down and turned my sights to the stairs
climbing the outside of the spire. The stairs were covered in copper,
matching the aesthetic of the tower, and were slightly slippery in the
mid-morning damp. I clung to the inner wall to the left of the stairs,
reached out to the railing opposite for balance, and climbed.

Kiesa, Julian, and Calvin climb the spire of the Church of Our Saviour

The tower gave little sense of progress as the stairs curved gently to
the left and climbed inexorably higher. With each step the tower grew
narrower as it tapered to a point, but that wasn't obvious while
climbing the stairs. Kiesa caught up with me, carrying Julian in the
backpack carrier with Calvin tagging along behind her, and we waited for
traffic to clear ahead of us. I leaned nervously on the spire wall, the
only obviously solid thing, and tried not to look too far over the edge
of the railing.

The foot traffic on the stairs cleared after a few minutes, and I
continued the climb to the top. I declared victory when I could see the
stairs tapering into nothingness at what must have been the top, and
turned around to (very carefully) descend the stairs back down to the
bottom of the tower.

Stairs at the top of the spire of the Church of Our Saviour

Back on solid ground I collected myself and marveled that I'd actually
made it all the way to the top. If my objective were to do something
every day that scared me, climbing to the top of the spire of the Church
of Our Saviour would definitely count.

Once we'd recovered from the climb, and Julian had a chance to run
around in the church grounds, we headed back to the metro and headed to
the Designmuseum Danmark, a modest museum showcasing Danish design,
mostly in the second half of the twentieth century. We started in an
exhibit on Japanese design that called out the inspiration that
minimalist Japanese design had on Danish design, then looked through a
series of exhibits on clothing design in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries that led into an exhibit on haute couture. I looked through an
interesting exhibit on the Danish chair, explicitly citing Shaker chairs
as an influence. One room had a large array of chairs, each in their own
alcove, stacked from floor to ceiling, identifying the unique design
features of each chair and its place in the conversation on design.

Danish chairs in the Designmuseum Danmark

I appreciated the museum's focus on various aspects of design -- most of
the items in the collection were commercial pieces, designed to fit not
only an aesthetic but also a budget. (The text mentioned that one of the
chairs was designed to be packed flat in a small box, but the museum did
not otherwise address the giant furniture maker and retailer hailing
from the other side of the straight.) The final exhibit showed a bunch
of individual pieces of mass-produced commercial design from the last
twenty-five years. Most were mass-market consumer products, and many
were consumer electronics. The exhibit explored the intersection between
design, commerce, and economics, and was more interesting than any of
the topics would have been on their own.

By the time we wrapped up the museum it was early afternoon. Kiesa found
a Vietnamese restaurant serving vegetarian versions. Kiesa and the kids
had noodles, and I had bahn mi. The sandwich was packed with cilantro,
but contrary to its appearance, it was not entirely cilantro.

Banh mi chay

Our next stop was Kastellet, a well-preserved star fortress built to
protect Copenhagen from invasion by water that still held some military
offices. We climbed to the top of the embankment forming the outer wall
of the fort and walked around the perimeter of the fort, stopping to
investigate the occasional cannon.

Calvin, Kiesa, and Julian at Kastellet

From the top of the embankment we could see the main waterway through
central Copenhagen, and the tourist traffic (including a float plane
landing) on the water. I saw the distinctive logo of the Danish shipping
company Maersk on their headquarters on the waterfront. I see their logo
on containers on most container ships I see sailing through San
Francisco Bay on their way to or from the Port of Oakland. From my deck
I can see the container docks at the Port of Oakland, but it's too far
away to make out the logos on individual shipping containers.

Barracks at Kastellet

We descended the ramp on the north side of the fort to walk through a
monument to Denmark's casualties in its international deployments since
1948 -- mostly as part of NATO. (The beginning date was posted on the
interpretive sign, presumably representing the end of the Second World
War.) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were represented, as well as
other conflicts, not all of which I recognized.

Monunment for Denmark's international effort since 1948

The first section identified all of the conflicts in which Danish
military personnel were deployed. The second listed all of those killed
in action, grouped by conflict. The third part of the memorial was an
orchard representing the veterans, and those who survived the people
killed.

We left the fort and walked to the small statue of the Little Mermaid on
the waterfront. As soon as we left the fort and turned towards the
statue it was obvious that we were entering the domain of tourists --
large tourist buses and campers from around the EU waited by the road,
and the crowds grew larger and began to carry more cameras. We walked
further down the waterfront and looped back to get the full effect of
the little statue, perched on a rock in the water, surrounded by crowds
of tourists with cameras.

Crowd of tourists at The Little Mermaid

By this point it was late in the afternoon and I had wrapped up
everything on my todo list for the day. (I left all of Copenhagen's art
museums off my list on the theory that they would be relatively
inaccessible to the younger members of the family.) We retreated from
the tourist chaos around the Little Mermaid to the calm of the fort and
continued our circuit around the embankments, seeing the conjoined
church and prison (with windows in the prison allowing inmates to
observe the services) and the powder house, set away from the rest of
the fort in an arm of the star. On the far side of the fort, away from
the waterfront, the fort was a calm and peaceful park.

Moat at Kastellet

We walked to the nearest train station and caught a commuter train one
stop south, then caught the metro one stop west to get supper at a
well-regarded Indian take-away restaurant -- but the restaurant only
accepted cash (plus Danish bank cards) and we had forgotten to pick up
cash on the way. (I had spent my kroner buying groceries, but we didn't
regularly need cash in Denmark; we could pay for almost everything with
our credit cards.) I headed back to the nearest ATM but discovered that
I had forgotten my PIN (and, for security, I hadn't recorded my PIN in
my password manager, which seemed like a good idea at the time). We
scrubbed the idea of getting take-away and headed instead to Copenhagen
Street Food at Paper Island. It was raining by the time we got there,
after threatening to rain all day long, and the building's interior was
stifling, but I found an amazing Moroccan flatbread served with large
chunks of fresh mozzarella. (The rest of the family ate pizza from a
different food stall.)

Calvin, Julian, and Kiesa at Paper Island

We took the metro back to our Airbnb and packed for our long flight back
home to North America the next day.

like a lot of geeks, I can run risky meatspace things
through my head until a faulty value comes out that
suggests there's no need to actually do them.
- Caleb John Clark, "Linux and the Lady", Salon.com 27 September 2000